This is us.

SocietyOne is radically changing the landscape of financial services in Australia. Since our foundation five years ago, we have gone from a standing start to providing more than $450 million in loans to customers

As well as being the pioneer of marketplace (or ‘peer-to-peer’) lending in Australia we are also the largest provider of personal loans in the marketplace sector.

Over that time, we have evolved from a small online start-up to a scaled up, new generation digital financial services company that is loosening the stranglehold the traditional banks have on the consumer finance market, estimated by APRA to be $100 billion in size (excluding housing).

While our total lending is currently small by comparison to the banks, we are growing - and rapidly. Our target is to take a 2-3% share of this market over the next five years and grow our customer numbers to 100,000.

That’s ambitious and it’s bold. But after witnessing successive six-month periods of growth over the last two years to take us to $450 million in loans and matching finance – including a 400 per cent increase in our total originations over the last 20 months - we believe that it is more than achievable.

We are doing that by offering a completely new and different approach to lending which uses risk-based pricing to match the needs of borrowers to the investment requirements of our investors who finance loans.

We're able to offer unsecured personal loans to individuals, and loans to farmers which are uniquely secured against livestock.

This is the lending revolution that connects borrowers and lenders in a marketplace and is all made possible by our Clearmatch technology platform.

Clearmatch changes the laborious, time-consuming, bureaucratic and stressful loan application process which just as often leads to a “no” for the customers of a traditional bank as it does to a “yes”.

First, we run a “soft” online credit check for our customers that doesn’t affect their credit rating, so we can see if they’re likely to qualify for a loan before they apply. We then walk them through a simple online application process. If the application is successful, customers are offered a fixed rate loan, tailored to their individual credit worthiness, with the money usually deposited in their accounts within 48 hours.

Compare that to the complicated and drawn-out approach of the traditional banks and it’s easy to see why customers prefer to do business with us as demonstrated by our Net Promoter Score of 62 and a customer product-rated review rating of 4.6 out of 5 on productreview.com.au.

Our investor lenders like us too, with investment returns of above 9% since January 2013 and current default rates (payment defaults and impaired loans) of 1.8% across the whole loan portfolio.

It all adds up to a superior customer experience created by Australia’s pioneering and leading player in marketplace lending. A passionate group of people working as one team to provide our customers with an opportunity to change their worlds and achieve their financial dreams – and ours too.

The Beginning

Founded in 2011 by Greg Symons and Matt Symons (same names but no relation!), we have grown from the smallest of beginnings and just a handful of people to the confident, innovative and trusted company we are today. This is how it happened.

2012

August

6th - We open for business as Australia's first marketplace lender offering personal loans between $5k and $35k

22nd - We provide our first loan - to Doug of Melbourne. Thanks Doug!

November

SocietyOne voted "Best of Show" at Finovate Asia 2012 for the way our ClearMatch technology streamlines the loan application process

July

October

2014

February

Westpac Group's Reinventure Fund invests $5 million in SocietyOne as part of our Series A capital raising and becomes a major shareholder

March

Number of borrower customers grows to 200 as lending reaches $4 million

July

Funded loans pass the $10 million mark

December

We welcome Australian Capital Equity, Consolidated Press Holdings and News Corp Australia as shareholders after our successful Series B $20 million capital raising

2015

February

The new year gets off to a great start as we pass $20 million in funded loans

July

We partner with Australia's largest credit bureau, Veda, to promote getcreditscore.com.au and offer more credit scores for free

September

We pass $50 million in total funded loans

December

The Fintech 100 report compiled by KPMG and H2 Ventures names us as the 37th top financial technology company in the world

2016

March

Jason Yetton is appointed CEO, taking over from co-founder Matt Symons

April

We break through the $100 million barrier of loans funded, a record for an Australian marketplace lender

May

We raise a further $25 million in capital from existing and new shareholders, making a total of $55 million since early 2014

September

We chalk up another lending record, this time $150 million in funded loans

December

Total originations reach $200 million since inception, a further record for lending

2017

March

Growth accelerates over the first quarter of 2017 as we top $250 million in total lending

May

We win two major awards: Innovative Retail Banking Product of the Year at the Australian Retail Banking Awards and Excellence in P2P Lending at the inaugural FinTech Australia awards

June

More records as we advance over $100 million in the first half of 2017 and take total lending past $310 million since inception

August

We celebrate our fifth birthday since we started operating in 2012, having helped more than 13,000 customers with $325 million provided in loans by our investor funders.

October

It’s a triple milestone for our third quarter of this year with $350 million in total lending since inception, a current loan book of $200 million and 2017 already beating 2016’s total for loans written.

SocietyOne Australia Pty Ltd ACN 151 627 977 holds Australian Credit Licence No. 423660 and is an authorised representative of SocietyOne Investment Management Pty Ltd ACN 604 960 018, ASFL 477365. All loans are originated by Society One, issued by Australian Executor Trustees Limited ABN 84 007 869 794, Australian Credit Licence No. 240023 as custodian for the SocietyOne P2P Lending Trust and are signed by Society One under a power of attorney for and on behalf of Australian Executor Trustees Limited. Credit is subject to SocietyOne’s standard terms and conditions and lending criteria.